


A Hundred Lifetimes

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Series: We're not meant to be alone [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Missing Scene, Temporary Character Death, listen she's in her mid twenties and she killed like a dozen people but she is babey and i love her, more like, nile is Babey, obviously, she's new and she's young and Nicolo gets poetic after death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25526119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: After the worst of it, after a gun to his mouth, and Yusuf, terrified above him, after Nile died for Andy twice and Nicoló jumped in front of more bullets than he can count, after Sebastien is quiet in the way that grief carves into him, Nicoló feels as old as he is. The dust of a millennium is settled on his skin, the blood of a hundred lifetimes smeared on his love’s clothes, and Andromache doesn’t sit quite upright. Nile is squeezed into the seat at the corner of the car, and her eyes are fresh and clear and her skin is new as the dew on the grass. Her hands don’t tremble and her cheeks are dry, her braids bloodied.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf & Nicky | Nicolò, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: We're not meant to be alone [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906879
Comments: 31
Kudos: 316





	A Hundred Lifetimes

_mamma, I have left my life in ashes for my love._  
_mamma, if you could see his eyes, if you could hear his voice;_  
_if you could feel his touch, mamma, surely you would understand._

_mamma, the saints do not compare; to my love and his words_  
_mamma, forgive me not for my love and the blood on my hands_

_there is nothing to forgive._

*

„Nicoló“, says Yusuf, and his voice is soft with the millennium stretched between them. There is something heavy in the air, something that isn’t gas or death still gripping for Nicoló’s bones. He can’t move. “Nicoló, destati.” It’s not Genoese, not the way they both know it as it lies curled between their tongues, the way it sits on Yusuf’s lips. The guards are shouting. Nicoló’s lungs are still stuttering, still full of gas and his own surprise, and he can’t move. His tongue lies heavy tied to the roof of his mouth, and the ground beneath him rattles.

Yusuf's hands are on his shoulders and Nicoló can't move and he can't breathe, and there is laughter and mocking all around him and Yusuf's voice is a desperate, tender thing. Nicoló wishes he'd grabbed his sword, wishes he'd droven it through all of them until he was dripping with their blood, until the last of them lay dead at their feet and there wouldn't be a single bullet in Yusuf's chest. His voice box knits back together and Yusuf is still reaching for him, still fitting his voice around what Genoese has become, and Nicoló doesn't move or take a breath. "Sono qui", he says, and again as he pulls himself up.

The men laugh, and Yusuf looks at them with his eyes and his voice and all of their lives and spits it at them.

After the worst of it, after a gun to his mouth, and Yusuf, terrified above him, after Nile died for Andy twice and Nicoló jumped in front of more bullets than he can count, after Sebastien is quiet in the way that grief carves into him, Nicoló feels as old as he is. The dust of a millennium is settled on his skin, the blood of a hundred lifetimes smeared on his love’s clothes, and Andromache doesn’t sit quite upright. Nile is squeezed into the seat at the corner of the car, and her eyes are fresh and clear and her skin is new as the dew on the grass. Her hands don’t tremble and her cheeks are dry, her braids bloodied.

“La tazal mjrd fata”, Yusuf says from where he is tangled with Nicoló, his arms around him, his lips on his neck. Nicoló hums. _Una bambina_ , even as her life has spanned more than two decades, now, even as she took her gun and the man who’d trapped them all and nothing but her two good hands to drag them back out with, even as she is heavy with bullets and blood.

She is still new and young as they once were, a thousand years ago, when his sword was still dripping with Yusuf’s blood as he drove it through his chest again, when Yusuf’s hands were still wet with his blood as he slit his throat, again. Yusuf kisses the spot on his neck just over his collar bones, his hands steady on his own, and Nicoló sighs. _He’s all and he’s more_ , Yusuf had said, with his eyes like a starry night when the milky way was still visible, stretched out above them, and Nicoló can still feel the zip tie around his wrists, Yusuf’s hand on his jaw.

He is not very poetic, in English. Even after centuries, the sound doesn’t sit quite right in his throat, not the way it does for Yusuf, whose tongue has never had a problem with sounds. Yusuf, who spoke to him in Genoese after the twentieth time Nicoló had killed him, all rage and desperation and drowning in blood. English doesn’t form its words right, doesn’t have the right melody, has never been something soft in Nicoló’s mouth.

So he whispers his poetry to Yusuf in a language nobody speaks, anymore, tucked into the corner of a safehouse or the sheets of a hotel bed or crowded against a kitchen sink or stretched out over the backseat of a car, with Nile so new next to them that it makes Nicoló’s bones ache in a way death never could.

_You are my life. I’ve dreamt of you before I ever loved you and I’ve loved you before I ever kissed you. I die and reach for you and I live and reach for you because you are what keeps me tethered to this world. I’ve loved you for a hundred lifetimes and I will love you when we can barely remember a time when Nile was new._

Yusuf kisses him, and Andy laughs from where she’s crammed into the driver’s seat. It’s the same laugh she’s had since Nicoló first bled out in the dust, and he smiles at her through the rearview mirror. Sebastien is silent.

Nile shifts in her seat. “What now?”, she asks, and looks at Sebastien, the way he’s folded into his seat, the way Nicoló knows him; grave and drunk and carved into himself. His body doesn’t hurt anymore, from the probing and the needles and the killing, but the image of Yusuf, bloodied and carved to pieces, is too fresh in his mind to feel pity for Sebastien and his ever present grief.

His sword is still in the safehouse, tucked into its sheath, and Nicoló imagines the way Sebastien’s ribs would break if he drove it through him, a splatter of blood on this car seat. Andromache looks at him with eyes older than any of them, still wet with tears. He looks at Nile.

“We sleep”, he says, in her English, because she doesn’t speak any of their languages yet. “We find a place, we keep our weapons safe, we wash the blood out of our hair and our clothes and then we sleep.”

Nile nods, and doesn’t stop looking at Sebastien. Yusuf is a warm weight against Nicoló’s back, a soft whisper in his ears, and Nicoló curls into him. He can still taste the steel of the gun in his mouth, can still see Yusuf above him, bloodied and coughing.

“Okay”, says Nile and nods. “Okay.” Then, after a beat: “I’m gonna need a comb.”

Andromache laughs.


End file.
